A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Shirley Charleson is a homemaker and member of Bridlewood Presbyterian Church, Agincourt, Ont.
Called to Die, Steve Estes. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 198pp.
Called to Die is the biography of American linguist Chester Allen Bitterman III who was slain by terrorists in Bogota, Colombia in 1981.
Chet Bitterman was an enthusiastic man of 28, married and father of two little girls when seven armed terrorists broke into the Summer Institute of Linguistics guest house on January 19, 1981 and abducted him. The evening before, he had closed a meeting of about 30 people with the prayer “Lord, it’s no mistake we’re all here in Colombia. You know the plan of our lives even when we were in our mothers’ wombs.”
The book describes Chet’s upbringing in a Christian home, as one of eight children, his school years and his time at Columbia Bible College. We read of some of his escapades, and realize what a high-spirited, enthusiastic young man he was. In 1974 Chet heard a linguist with Wycliffe Bible Translators speak in the college chapel and there the seeds of becoming a translator were sown. He worked for some time in his father’s business before finally responding to the call to be a translator. “I’ve only got 75 years on this earth at best,” he said. “I want to use them to give someone the Bible.”
Chet married Brenda Gardner, whose parents were support workers with Wycliffe in Colombia, and together they prepared to go to Colombia as translators to one of the Indian tribes. During that time of preparation and waiting assignment to a tribe, Chet was working at two full-time jobs for the Summer Institute of Linguistics, one as buyer and the other as manager of their guest house. It was from there he was kidnapped and later shot to death.
Through the book we read of the political situation that resulted in the formation of the group M-19, the terrorists who were responsible for the kidnapping.
This is a thrilling story of a man who obeyed the call of God to serve him in another land; of a group of Christians who tried to negotiate with the terrorists for his release. While Chet Bitterman was frustrated in his efforts to translate the Bible into Carijona “he preached instead to his captors. And through his capture and death the Christian Gospel was proclaimed and lived out before Colombia’s millions.”
This is a gripping book that is difficult to put down once started.